3 ms·
No, the main challenge is calling every mom & pop store and getting them indexed. You are also unlikely to convince a mom & pop store to do any extra work, esp
by jfarmer 16y ago
No, the main challenge is calling every mom & pop store and getting them indexed. You are also unlikely to convince a mom & pop store to do any extra work, especially if it involves something they don't understand (computers).
There's a reason Milo is starting with big-box and national retailers.
- akozak 16y agoI feel like that's basically what I said.
- jfarmer 16y agoI thought you were saying that business owners would be reluctant to share their data,e.g., for privacy or competitive reasons, versus: 1. The difficulty and expense associated with calling and converting smaller retailers 2. The amount of effort required by smaller retailers to integrate with your system coupled with the fact that smaller retailers are technologically lazy and don't readily understand the benefits of integrating The "easiest" way might be to replace their inventory systems yourself, for example. This is more-or-less what OpenTable did.
- akozak 16y agoNo, I meant for all of those reasons, not any one. I'm sure there would be a wide variety of reasons a business wouldn't want to publish data. You're right to draw them out into separate worries.
- sportsTAKES 16y agoThe company I work for is trying to come up with a solution of it's own... We're working on tagging our products with RFID. That way, we can show the inventory of the products online for consumers to see. Not only that, we can help our retail partners keep our product in stock. It's at no cost to the retailer and relatively simple. Walmart has been trying to get a similar system implemented for years (they're currently testing their latest iteration on denim - all denim is tagged supposedly). We do not sell to Walmart, we're in a very different channel.